


Wondrous Creation

by piratemistress



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:17:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8255603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratemistress/pseuds/piratemistress
Summary: Such encounters were inevitable, he reasoned, and yet he was still unprepared for the morning when Lily showed up.To begin with, it was daylight. He had thought himself safe from monstrous apparitions while the sun shone, but that was not actually the case. It was eleven in the morning on a Saturday when there came the knock on the door.“Victor, please,” came the plaintive voice, sounding more determined. “We need your help.”***Trigger warning for discussion of abortion. Spoilers for Season 3.





	

Victor hoped – no, feared – no, hoped and feared - that Lily would return to him someday.

He expected it in the late dark hours, during a storm, when the moon was full, or another time such as evil prefers. At such times, he steeled himself with oblivion in a needle.

Even his first Creature, that navel-gazing, self-pitying ingrate, had returned. He must have come back to London in recent weeks. Once they passed each other at lunch hour, on opposite sides of the street. Victor automatically touched his hat with a nod, before considering how futile such a gesture of civility would be under the circumstances. The Creature met his gaze, wide-eyed, and gave an awkward sideways jerk of his head that Victor thought must have been an acknowledgment in return.

 _Good day, you bastard_ , Victor thought bitterly, shoving his hands in his trenchcoat pockets. _You’re welcome for your life. Even if you can’t appreciate it._

Such encounters were inevitable, he reasoned, and yet he was still unprepared for the morning when Lily showed up.

To begin with, it was daylight. He had thought himself safe from monstrous apparitions while the sun shone, but that was not actually the case. It was eleven in the morning on a Saturday when there came the knock on the door.

A bill collector, he first imagined, glancing around to see if he could escape out a window unseen. The knocking became more insistent, and finally, the voice:

“Victor, I know you’re in there. Please open the door.”

His heart leapt and began to pound, all the while a chill permeated his extremities: _her_.

He swore and began to pace, glancing around at the mess the lab had become. Half-eaten food, dirty plates, empty bottles of chemicals and booze. Lack of employment didn’t agree with him.

He passed in front of a looking glass, and absently ran his hands through his hair. He hadn’t shaved.

“Victor, please,” came the plaintive voice, sounding more determined. “We need your help.”

 _Help_. Victor hung his head, hearing the word resonate in his mind, penetrating the fog of numbness. He cringed. The cunning little bitch had always known how to cut him to the quick.

He sighed, and went to open the door.

He hadn’t thought much about who the _we_ might be, so he imagined perhaps he might find Dorian and Lily together on his stoop. Instead, Lily stood there alone, wrapped in a dingy woolen cloak, hood pulled up against the drizzle.

She smiled. It almost seemed genuine.

He looked at her. He always had to look at her. He noted how blond wisps curled, damp, at her temples. He noted her skin was as pale as always (he had not mastered response to the sun in his scientific process). She had not grown plump, but nor was she overly thin. So, she was eating. She seemed well.

“What do you want?” he said, sounding more petulant than he would have liked.

Lily turned her head, and from behind her emerged a girl. She was perhaps fifteen, small, thin. She didn’t have a cloak, just a shawl. Her dress was of cheap fabric and a muddy color. As Lily brought the girl in front of her, Victor noticed the slightest bulge at the girl’s abdomen. His eyes flew up to Lily’s.

“May we come in?” Lily said in a measured tone.

Cursing inwardly, Victor pushed open the door and allowed them to enter.

Once out of the rain, the waif of a girl began to shiver. “Is there a blanket?” Lily asked, but it wasn’t a question. She looked pointedly at Victor.

“Er – of course… somewhere.”

When he returned with the blanket, Lily wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders and stroked her hair with a small smile. “Go warm yourself by the fire, my dear.”

“Oh. Er. Let me, er. Yes.” Victor shuffled ahead of the girl to scoop in a bit more coal.

Once the girl was seated, Lily and Victor turned conspiratorially toward another corner of the lab.

“Victor, you have to help her.”

“How far along is she?”

“Three months, perhaps four. She thinks.”

“Is she ill?”

“No.” Lily tilted her face up to meet Victor’s gaze.

Victor frowned. “What is it you want me to do, exactly? Examine her?”

Lily stared back. “Are you so blind that I have to spell it out for you?”

“I—“ Victor paused, looked at the girl, a small, huddled shape by the fire. Realization dawned. “No. No, no, no.”

“ _Please_ , Victor.”

Victor shook his head. “You convince me to cease monstrous experiments, and you would make me a butcher of babies?”

“I’ll pay you.”

At this, Victor let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, a butcher for hire – much better.”

“Shhh.” Lily grabbed his arm and leaned close. His breath caught in response to her proximity. “Listen to me. She sweeps floors at the grocery. She won’t tell me about the father. I’m not sure why. Her eyes glaze over whenever I ask. She has younger siblings that she cares for. If she loses her place at the shop, they’ll all be on the streets. Please, _please_ , Victor, you don’t know how much I despise having to come to you.” Her eyes filled with what appeared to be real tears. “But she’s only thirteen. Look at her, Victor. Look at her.”

He was weak. He looked. The girl sat there, staring into the fire. Her hair was brown and straight. She held out her small hands to the warmth, twisting and rubbing them. They were calloused from physical work. A child’s hands, toughened like laboring man’s.

Victor closed his eyes, slowly breathing in, and let out a sigh. He supposed he was damned since the first time he ever lifted a scalpel. “Where are her parents?”

“Dead.”

He eyed Lily sidelong. She looked back at him, expectantly. “After what you’ve told me about Sarah,” he said quietly, “I am very surprised to hear such a plea from you.”

“Oh, Victor,” Lily said, lifting a hand to stroke his cheek. “You men are so blind to the lives we women lead. I was much older than her, and I was already a whore. I had nothing to lose by becoming a whore with a child. Although as it turns out, perhaps I could have spared Sarah the misery of her short life…” Her breath hitched, and she cleared her throat. “It’s not the same. This girl could still keep her job. Her little brothers and sisters could live in a warm room. It’s up to you, Victor.”

He rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I’ve never even performed the procedure. Only assisted.”

“They say it can be done so that the girl can still bear children. If anyone can, my darling doctor… you can.”

He turned to look at Lily. “People look the other way for harmless crackpot scientists whiling away their time in labs. Not so for anyone who does this type of work. You can’t tell anyone. Not a soul. I’d have both the church and the police to contend with, if an angry righteous mob didn’t set fire to the lab, first. You understand that, don’t you?”

She blinked. “So you’ll do it?”

He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table. He hung his head. “Yes. Just this once.”

Lily let out a breath that was almost a sob, and grabbed him by the shoulders, turning him into her embrace. “Thank you,” she whispered against his neck, and the sensation of her lips moving over his skin set his heart racing again.

When she released him, his eyes moved over the filth in his work area. “I may need your help. I haven’t sanitized the surgical area in a while.”

Lily eyed the mess with distaste. “Yes. Well. I suppose I can help.”

“It will reduce the risk of infection,” he explained. “First, though, we should probably make sure she understands what she’s signed up for. There’s no going back. No matter what kind of scientist I am.” 

*          *          *

Lily and Victor sat by the fire with the girl, whose name was Tina, and Victor explained how it all would work and what the result would be. The girl listened, composed, nodding in comprehension. Her eyes were wise and frank in her small face. The eyes of a much older woman.

“Will it hurt?” she asked first.

“It might.” Victor patted the girl’s hand. “We’ll give you something to help you sleep, but it doesn’t always work well. But you won’t feel… a lot, in any case.”

“How soon can I go back to work?” was the next question.

“Oh.” Victor should have expected the question, but he hadn’t. “Why, Monday, if you’re feeling well enough.”

The girl nodded again, tears at the corner of her eyes. Sadness or relief? Victor wondered. Perhaps both.

“Oh, and er…” The girl swallowed. “How much?”

Victor glanced at Lily, uncertain how to proceed. “Well…”

“Don’t tell me it’s free of charge.” The girl’s gaze was resolute. “Nothing’s free. If people don’t want money then they want something else. I just want to know what.”

“How about a trade?” Lily said gently, laying a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Victor could use your help tidying up this place once a week for let’s say, three weeks? A month? The shop’s closed on Saturdays, isn’t that right?”

The girl nodded, but the gaze she turned on Victor was mistrustful. “Just… sweeping up?”

Victor swallowed the defense that sprang to his lips – _but I’d never hurt you_ – and forced a small smile. “Why don’t I plan to take my walk outdoors when you arrive, and you’ll be done sweeping up by the time I return?”

The girl smiled and gave a nod. “It’d be my pleasure. Thank you.” She turned her face up to Lily. “Or perhaps Lily could come along too, since you’re friends.”

Lily’s eyes widened and she cleared her throat. “Er… perhaps. But Dr. Frankenstein and I have to go clean up now, so there’s a nice clean place for your procedure, all right?”

Leaving the girl to sit quietly by the fire, Lily and Victor headed for the surgical area.

“Is that what we are? Friends?” Victor teased, starting to pick up plates and discarded bottles from the counters.

Lily looked at him from beneath lowered lids. “Well, I had to tell the girl something about us being acquainted. Would you have preferred the truth?”

“’Victor, my very favorite resurrector of the dead; his skill with a scalpel is unparalleled.’” Victor smiled. “Wouldn’t that have instilled good faith?”

“Yes, well as long as she’s neither dead, nor dying of consumption, she would have naught to fear from you,” Lily said dryly.

He would have retorted, but Lily shoved a stack of dirty dishes into his arms.

 

*          *          *

 

An hour later, Victor watched as Lily sat back from where she had crouched on the floor, scrub brush in hand, and wiped sweat from her brow. She eyed Victor, who was similarly occupied.

“This is _the_ last time I clean for you, Victor,” she declared, pushing hair out of her face with a palm.

“Fair enough, if it’s the last time you bring me something to be deprived of life in sanitary conditions.”

Lily acknowledged that with a lift of her brows, and her gaze moved over the floor. “We’ve made good progress, I think. And in any case, you can’t deprive something of life that’s not alive. It’s not alive till it’s born.”

Victor scoffed. “Is that what you think?” He stood, and went to get his instruments from where they had been boiled. Lily stood beside him at the work table as they began to carefully dry them and covered them with his very few clean towels. “How alive does that make you, I wonder?” he murmured to her.

Lily grasped a shiny clean scalpel and lifted it ominously to Victor’s chin. “Alive enough to slit your throat in your bed.”

Victor twisted his lips, suppressing a smile as he slid it carefully from her grip. Lily crossed the room to pick up the scrub bucket as he said, “Is that all you’d do in my bed?”

A dirty washrag landed with a sudden _plop_ on Victor’s neck.

“Be careful with the dirty water in the surgery area!” he admonished her, peeling the washrag off and dropping it in the other scrub bucket. “The girl’s not some superior being impervious to infection, remember?”

“Very well,” Lily said in a bored tone. “Why don’t you study how to stop regular people becoming ill from such things, since you’ve obviously too much time on your hands?”

“I’m sure someone is. And someday someone will succeed.” After changing his apron, Victor took the remainder of the boiled hot water and began to wash his hands. “Perhaps someday there’ll even be a cure for consumption. Or better yet, something preventative.”

Lily drew up next to him. “And a way to keep children warm even when fires go out.” He paused, wanting to take her hand, knowing it would mean going through the washing procedure again.

“And that too,” he said quietly. Lily hovered nearby, seemingly waiting for something. “You can probably return tonight, if Dorian is expecting you,” he told her.

“Dorian’s not expecting me. I left him.”

Victor paused for a few moments, absorbing that information. “Ah.”

“Is there some way that I might… assist?”

He considered this, noting there was enough hot water left for another person to wash their hands. He indicated she should wash hers. “If you were anyone else, I’d caution you about the sharp instruments, the possibility of blood, the inside view of human anatomy. But…”

She began scrubbing her hands. “I’m no stranger to those.”

“No.”

“It should be very simple. We really only prepare all those instruments just in case they’re needed.”

“Tell me how it should be done,” she said.

“All right.” And he did.

 

*          *          *

 

When it was over, the girl slept, probably from both exhaustion and the whiskey and laudanum they’d given her. She was curled on a settee by the fire, and Lily was loath to wake her to go home. Victor said they could stay.

“I suppose I’ll have to climb in with you to stay warm,” Lily joked, but Victor wasn’t amused. He pulled the blanket from his bed and held it out to her, stiff-armed.

“Here.”

“What? What will you use?”

“I’ll be fine. I won’t have it said a woman was constrained to share my bed in order to stay warm in my home.”

“Victor… you’re so dramatic,” Lily said, taking the blanket from him.

“Where are you staying these days?” he asked, disappearing around a corner to change.

“A little room a few streets over.”

“And how are you paying room and board?”

He could hear a wry smile in her voice. “Men’s purses, poorly attached.”

“Don’t get caught. I can ask in my less reputable circles if anyone needs someone with your, er, particular skills.”

“I won’t get caught. But yes, if you know of something, I’ll consider it.”

“Good.”

She watched him as he walked toward her in the lamplight, wrapped in his well-worn dressing gown. He saw her eyeing him with interest. Predatory? Sexual? Who could tell?

“Aren’t you going to tell me that I need only come back to you and my every need shall be seen to?” she said with a small smile.

“Would you believe it if I did?”

“Hm.” Her smile broadened. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Good. Neither would I. Good night.”

 

*          *          *

 

It was two or three in the morning, a chill settled throughout the house, and a noise woke Victor. Someone was stirring.

A moment later, his bed dipped, and his thin covers were pushed aside.

“What do you want?” he mumbled, half-asleep, to Lily, who he recognized also by her light perfume.

“I’m cold. Truly.”

“Go stoke the fire, then.”

“Can’t feel it from here.”

He rolled away from her to make space, sighing. “Fine. As you wish.”

She drew close to him, and he was startled by the coolness of her flesh against his. “Christ, you are cold,” he said, and turned back toward her. “Are you often this way?”

“Every once in a while, in the cooler weather, yes,” she said. He placed a hand on her forehead, her arm, testing the temperature, and frowned. He lay a finger on her neck to read her pulse.

“Your heart’s beating well, but I must not have done as good a job repairing your circulatory system as I thought.” He frowned again. “Sorry about that. You might have to move around some when this happens. You could walk up and down the stairs. Perhaps some hot tea?”

“I wouldn’t want to disturb Tina. Poor wretch has been through enough.”

Victor sighed. “All right. Well, rub your hands and feet together, at least. It’s your extremities I’d worry about.” He took her hands and began to rub them between his. “There we are. You’re warming up already.”

She allowed this for only a few moments before pulling a hand from his grip, and lifting it to stroke his cheek. “I’m always surprised there’s still kindness in you, Victor. After everything.”

“Apparently there’s some in you as well. These men you’re relieving of their purses, how many live to see another day?”

She paused for a moment. “Most of them. But by no means all.”

“Hm,” he answered, and covered her hand with his, trailing his fingers absently down her bare arm. He felt her response; the slightest of shudders. Her pulse quickened, which he felt just beneath the soft skin of her wrist.

She leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips were soft and supple, her mouth inviting.

He resisted, his own heart pounding, his mind clamoring warnings of danger. After a moment he tore his mouth away. “Stop,” he managed amid rapid breaths. His chest was tight with emotion. “I’ll not be your… plaything.”

Her hand flew up to cup his throat, squeezing menacingly. “I could make you,” she whispered, relaxing her grip to stroke down his throat to his chest. “I could tempt and tease and toy with you until you were nothing.” She rolled atop him in an instant, a swift, inhuman movement, cat-like in its grace.

He lay still, watching her, unmoving.

She leaned down over him, her elbows atop his ribs. “Till there was nothing left. A quivering, sobbing, begging stump of a man whose only consolation could be found in a needle.”

Victor raised an eyebrow, surprised she knew, but refusing to take the bait.

“I could make you love me again, even as I am, a murderer, a whore, a woman who’d never be satisfied with just one man. I could weaken you with desire so that you’d agree to anything I wanted, no matter how depraved.”

She reached down to trace the outline of his hardened cock through his pajamas, all the while keeping her face hovering above his. “Isn’t that right, Victor?” she whispered, and he felt his cock jump in response to her knowing touch.

“No,” he whispered back.

“No?” she mocked, sliding her hand inside his pajamas to fondle him skin to skin. He groaned.

 “No. You wouldn’t make me love you… again.”

She gave a little laugh, and ran her tongue over the stubble at his jawline. “Are you so sure? Men love what their cocks love. You’re very simple creatures, really.”

He pushed himself up, till he was facing her as she sat astride him. “No, my darling,” he said, lifting his hands to slide his fingers into her hair. “My half-mad, blood-soaked, dark little suffragette.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, her jaw. He trailed his mouth down her neck, and then stopped to look up and catch her triumphant gaze. “You can’t make me love you again… because I never stopped. I loved you when you were innocent. I still love you now.”

She looked at him, tilting her head, brows furrowing. The silence stretched between them, and she stared into his eyes, searching perhaps for the trick, for the intention to dominate or control her, for the desire to capture her. She wouldn’t find it. He’d had to give that up. But he’d never been able to give her up. Despite all his best efforts, he had never been able to forget her.

She held his face between her hands, still looking at him in utter disbelief. Finally she sighed, shaking her head. “You’re mad,” she whispered, but her breath hitched.

“I know,” he replied.

Their mouths came together in an instant, and this time there was no hesitation. He allowed her to plunder his mouth with her tongue, to strip off his shirt, to push him down on the bed with her considerable strength. _She is exceptional_ , he thought as she ripped his pajama trousers impatiently down his legs. _She is a marvelous creation_.

He sat up again to slide his hands behind her back and unbutton her dress as he kissed her lips, her chin, her jaw, her neck. She moaned when his teeth lightly scraped her skin, not like a surprised virgin, but like a woman who knows what awaits her.

He exposed her breasts and caught her nipple in his mouth, noticing how her head fell back, her eyes closed, her expression rapt. She tasted heavenly.

She lowered herself upon him, just as they were, face to face, her astride his lap. It barely resembled their first coupling, when she was pretending to be curious and he was pretending not to want her.

She took him urgently, desperately, and he let her, hungrily watching her beautiful pale body contort with pleasure as she rode him. She looked down and saw him watching her.

“Are you pleased with your creation, doctor?” she whispered, a glint in her eye telling him she was half teasing.

He raised his hand and spread his palm wide across her chest, moving it over the scars where he replaced her lungs, across the breasts that once fed a child. “You’re so beautiful and so strong,” he whispered. “I fixed you. I woke you. Now I love you. But my darling… I didn’t create you. Something wondrous did that.”

She suddenly leaned down and pressed her lips firmly to his, almost punishingly hard. He thought it was so he couldn’t watch her eyes fill with tears. Moments later, he watched as she touched herself until she came, shuddering, and the sight was so erotic he followed soon after.

Gathering her close beneath the blanket, their hearts pounding from the exertion, he pressed a kiss to her forehead, to her hair.

“I can’t stay,” she said after a moment. “I mean I can’t stay here after tonight. This hasn’t changed anything.”

He swallowed the initial pang of hurt, and cleared his throat. “All right.”

“I’m happy on my own. You might not see me again for weeks.”

It sounded like she was convincing herself more than Victor, but he let it pass. “I said, all right.”

There was a moment of quiet, and then she said hurriedly, “And don’t come round the boarding house looking for me. It was hard enough to convince them I was a decent woman.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

 *          *          *

 It was weeks before he saw her. Two weeks, precisely. There was a most unladylike pounding at his door around seven in the evening on a Sunday.

When he saw it was her, he wordlessly stood back and allowed her in.

“How are you?” he asked her, heading to the teapot for some more tea.

“I’m well. Your friend at the mortuary sends his regards. I’ve been assisting there for a weekly wage.”

“Good,” he said, trying to sound calm. He watched the lamplight play over her blond hair. He thought about stripping her naked and taking her on the floor by the light of the coal stove.

“And yourself?”

“The same. Short on coin. In search of a new project.”

Lily took the tea Victor handed her and sipped it.

“Will you sit?” he said, heading toward the warmth of the coal stove.

She sat in a chair beside his.

“Have you seen Tina?” he asked.

“Yes, at the grocer. She seems well. Thank you for your assistance. Though I’m afraid…”

“What?”

She met his eyes. “There are hundreds of Tinas in London, Victor. Maybe thousands. With no one to help them. Instead they swallow poison and bleed to death in the back room of a pub when that doesn’t work. They’re so young, Victor. They’re still children.”

“More doctors might perform it if it were legal.”

“Could I do it? I mean, if you trained me? Could I do it without harming the girls?”

Victor considered this, and then nodded. “I think you could. But it’s not safe for you. They do terrible things to female abortionists when they’re caught. You’d have to be very careful.”

“Well, it was just an idea. I’ll think it over.” She set her tea on a side table, and faced Victor. She seemed about to say something, but stopped, looking at his face with something like affection. “I can’t stay.”

He was disappointed, but he took a judicious sip of tea. “All right.”

“After tonight, I mean. I meant, I can’t stay permanently.”

“Fine with me, as I don’t recall inviting you to do so,” Victor managed, biting back a smile.

She snorted. “Don’t be a prick, Victor.” Then she stood up and climbed into his lap and kissed him.

She took him right there, in his chair, her dress rucked up around her hips, her hands pinning him in place. Afterward, he tipped her onto the floor and took her that way, too.

“I like sex. I’m going to fuck other men,” she whispered against his chest as they lay curled in his bed.

Victor swallowed. He disliked the image that sprang to mind, but nothing was worse than her absence. “If you want,” he managed.

Silence. Perhaps she hadn’t expected that answer. Then:

“I will. I truly will. I’ll be gone for days at a time if I like. Weeks, even.”

He bent his face to hers, kissed her lips lightly. “I love you. I suppose I’ll see you when you get back.” He turned to extinguish the bedside lamp.

 

*          *          *

“I killed a man tonight,” she said when he opened the door a few days later.

“Oh?” Victor said, stepping back as she entered in a swirl of wind and rain. “Who?”

“A procurer of children,” she said, and shrugged off her cloak. Victor took it and hung it on a rack.

“Anyone see you?”

“No.”

“Will anyone miss him?”

“I doubt it.” She strode over to Victor, a seductive swagger in her hips. “I slit his throat and left his body in the gutter.”

“May I suggest the river next time?” Victor said as he stirred a pot on the cooking stove. “Hard to say where those bodies came from.”

Lily acknowledged this with a lift of her brows and a tilt of her head. “Perhaps. I could probably carry the body by myself. I think? How heavy are you, Victor?”

Before he could respond, she had scooped him up and held him over her shoulder, before dumping him back on his feet.

“Yes, I do think I could carry the body to the river.” She tapped her finger on her chin thoughtfully.

He cleared his throat. “Would you like some supper?”

She eyed the stew he was stirring. “All right. I can’t stay, as I’ve said.”

“So you’ve said,” Victor replied, suppressing a smile. He handed her a steaming bowl of stew.

She stirred it once with her spoon. “Is this mutton? My goodness, Victor, what good fortune has befallen you? The last time I was here, all you had for supper was a mouldy apple and some cheese.”

“It was _not_ mouldy,” Victor replied.

“Well, it wasn’t fresh.” Lily ate a mouthful of stew. “Mmm, this is good.”

“Mould is not to be underestimated,” Victor continued. “For your information, mould may even produce substances that keep even nastier things from growing on food.”

“Victor, you’re really poor at dinner conversation. If you go on about mould, I will lose my appetite. Even we undead things like fresh food.” She patted her mouth with a napkin. “Are you going to tell me how you came by enough coin for meat, or not?”

“I gave a lecture at the medical school today about the possibility of lung transplants in chimpanzees and perhaps someday, humans. Merely theoretical, of course.”

“Of course,” Lily replied with a smile.

They ate beside the fire. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
